One of the horror genre's "most widely read critics" (Rue Morgue # 68), "an accomplished film journalist" (Comic Buyer's Guide #1535), and the award-winning author of Horror Films of the 1980s (2007), The Rock and Roll Film Encyclopedia (2007) and Horror Films of the 1970s (2002), John Kenneth Muir, presents his blog on film, television and nostalgia, named one of the Top 100 Film Studies Blog on the Net.

Thursday, February 09, 2017

The sixth episode of Logan’s Run (1977) --
"Half Life" -- is written by Shimon Wincelberg and directed by Steven
Stern.

The story concerns a society where all the
citizens are "processed" through a machine that separates each individual
into two parts, a good person (known as a "positive") and a bad
person, known as a "cast out."

The bad folks get thrown out of the city
to live in primitive barbarism outside the walls, while the
"positives" live inside, in luxury. A force field barrier separates
the two areas.

Logan (Gregory Harrison), Jessica (Heather
Menzies) and REM (Donald Moffat) happen upon this society and are welcomed by
the Positives.

In secret, however, the primitive leader,
The Patron (William Smith) plans to “process” them all in the same way. Apparently, he is unaware that his own wife,
Rama 2 (Kim Cattrall) is actually a cast-out, one struggling to suppress her
emotions.

Jessica is processed, and her “cast-out”
half is sent outside the barrier. Now
Logan and REM must not only rescue her, but put all her pieces back together
again.

So, the people of this strange post-apocalyptic community in “Half Life” have
by design recreated the accident that split Captain Kirk into good/bad parts in
the classic first seasonStar
Trekepisode,
"The Enemy Within."

It’s the same story, basically.

Logan and REM even share a conversation in
“Half Life” which they discuss the light and dark sides of human nature, and
assess both of them necessary to survival.

It’s easy to forget it today, in 2017, but
once upon the time, Star Trek cast a very long shadow across sci-fi TV. The same stories (and same moral lessons)
were often repeated, from one series to the next.

“Half Life” goes off in its own direction,
however, in its exploration of a government that has gone too far to socially
(and apparently, genetically…) engineer the nature of its citizenry. “No one
has ever shed a drop of blood in our society,” Logan and the others are
told, and yet the society seems cruel. People such as Jessica are abducted
against their will and forced to submit to the equivalent of an unnecessary
medical procedure. REM has a good
perspective on this “experiment to tidy
up human nature.” He understands it is a fool’s errand.

In this story of a "city where all
are perfected," there's one individual worth noting in further detail:
Rama 2. When she went through the processor as a child, Rama's positive side
died...leaving only her cast-out side remaining. But ever since then, there's
been a deception. Rama has been living as the consort of the Patron, the
community leader and hiding her "negative" nature. Because she has
been successful, Rama's presence proves that the processing procedure doesn't
really work. A little good and a little evil resides in each split part of the
citizenry...and so the attempt to separate these essential human qualities is
foolhardy indeed.

"Half Life" is, like "The Innocent," diverting and
entertaining enough, yet still ultimately rather derivative, and not grounded
closely enough in the idea behind the series (exploration of a ruined,
post-apocalyptic landscape). At least -finally-there's a whole society on display
here, not just a little community with one citizen. That's a positive sign, I
hope.

But the problems here are also severe. How
did a post-holocaust society devise and construct the technology to separate
two people into two physically identical (though opposite, emotionally)
individuals? That’s basically like
someone in the Dark Ages inventing the transporter, and it doesn’t make much
sense.

And again, how does the processor get its
power in this post-apocalyptic landscape? Finally, with the society restored,
and such abundant technology (including security in the form of the force
field), why don’t Logan, Jessica and REM settle here instead of continuing the
search for a hazy Sanctuary

About John

award-winning author of 27 books including Horror Films FAQ (2013), Horror Films of the 1990s (2011), Horror Films of the 1980s (2007), TV Year (2007), The Rock and Roll Film Encyclopedia (2007), Mercy in Her Eyes: The Films of Mira Nair (2006),, Best in Show: The Films of Christopher Guest and Company (2004), The Unseen Force: The Films of Sam Raimi (2004), An Askew View: The Films of Kevin Smith (2002), The Encyclopedia of Superheroes on Film & Television (2004), Exploring Space:1999 (1997), An Analytical Guide to TV's Battlestar Galactica (1998), Terror Television (2001), Space:1999 - The Forsaken (2003) and Horror Films of the 1970s (2002).

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